I joined Twitter back in 2006 and until 2010, had tweeted about 20,000 times a year before closing my account. Deleting Twitter and Facebook in 2011 are still some of my proudest technological decisions I’ve made because well..history has certainly reinforced why.
I’ve still been really hungry for a short-form blogging tool since leaving Twitter. I did Link Posts here and I even spun up multiple blogs for various hobbies but I always end up just coming back here.
A few years ago, I created a Known install on my server but lamented their lack of mobile apps. I also spun up a new WordPress install and I’ve tried Ghost and some other self-hosted tools but things are either too simple or too complex. I am an IndieWeb fan and prefer self hosting but maybe I’m just getting old. What I didn’t want is to join a free service.
Two years ago, I finally hopped onto Mastodon by creating my own instance at Masto.adamchandler.me and paying Masto.host $5 a month for a small plan. I’ve almost filled up my available storage thanks to media uploads but after 1200 posts, I’m really happy with what I’ve built.
What Mastodon has awoken in me is what social media has been missing since MySpace, LiveJournal and other websites is the connective tissue or collaboration and communication that doesn’t require a silo of people all using one app. I still think Email is the last open social network. You type anyone’s name at any domain name and they receive the message. It’s magic although the topology and protocol that makes it work is really quite simple. So simple that scammers, companies and grifters exploit it for their own gain and dump bill boards and malware into it.
Mastodon is just a piece of software I run on a server for $5 a month but I can federate to any other service that uses Activity Pub which, like email, is just a protocol.
I don’t need to be on Facebook as long as Facebook federates with my server. They never will and neither will Twitter but there are now more services in the English speaking world that do use Activity Pub and therefore millions of accounts can talk to each other outside of the walled gardens of the biggest social media companies.
It is a new age for social networking and I’m so excited about the possibilities.
Just today, Pixelfed launched their iPhone app (which was a barrier for what I had not been using the service before) meaning users can finally post from a mobile phone in a native app instead of mobile web. This also has convinced me to finally join the network for photos sharing.
I think that where you blog matters less than ever. So long as people can find your posts (domain name and using your real name online) and they can follow you (made possible with Activity Pub + Federation), you can post anywhere. RSS is still my primary means to following people (For example you can follow my Pixelfed account in your reader with this link) but RSS is one-directional. I can read their writing but I have to go where they are to comment, engage, share. Now I can see their posts and interact with them on any service.
This is huge!
So like I pay $7 a month to a web host for WordPress hosting and that’s working out okay for longer form blogging. I’ll share photos with Pixelfed and give that a go but I have an issue with Mastodon.
You see, I’m paying $5 a month but soon I’ll have to add more and double that to host media I share with Mastodon and I think that’s going to push me over the edge of what I want to pay for a blogging service.
There is one big issue with Mastodon that they have not yet solved….your posts aren’t portable. You can export them but you can’t import them elsewhere so if I stop paying Masto.host $5 a month, my posts will be gone forever. If I spin up a new Mastodon or Federated service, those posts currently can’t be imported where a lot of services support import from WordPress.
The good news is, Micro.blog CAN import my posts. Pretty amazing! So for $1 a month, I’ve followed everyone, they’ve followed me (thanks to Mastodon’s alias / forwarding rules) and Micro.blog has imported my 1200+ posts and photos into their service. Amazing!
I’ve been waiting for a while for this to change but it hasn’t and so instead of continuing to invest further time, money and social time in Mastodon, I frankly will just have to say goodbye to my posts and download an export before they go poof once I stop paying the bill at Masto.adamchandler.me.
What’s next then?
Well, a few days ago, I revived my Micro.blog account. In fact, I logged into my account and deleted it only to create a new one because Micro.blog introduced a compelling new tier. Micro.one. It’s $1 a month and offers what Mastodon was as well as a few things that are really interesting to me:
- Photo only-view for people visiting my blog and it’s a really decent experience
- Thanks to federation, I can follow everyone I was over on Mastodon and reply to them
- I can exceed 300 characters and submit long-form posts with a post-title if I’d like and then I can choose if I want to use MarsEdit to post to this blog or keep it on Micro.blog
- $12 a year instead of $60 (which will have doubled had I stayed on Masto.host
- I still get to maintain a micro blog alongside this one and continue using Activity pub and federate with other places. Micro.blog does support crossposting, podcasts and video uploads if I want to get into that but for now, I’m going to basically use it just as I did Mastodon but saving $80+ a year
I do think we’re on the cusp of something really great. There are a dozen software stacks all federated via Activity Pub and you can join open servers or roll your own in a web host. You can still interact with, follow and read posts from people all over the fediverse and each service (micro.blog being one of them) has unique features that are really cool and worth using.
The only complaint I have right now is Micro.blog’s 1st party apps for MacOS and iOS are really basic but this isn’t a huge deal where my use case is posting 300 character posts and sharing images.
You can follow me over at https://micro.adamchandler.me since https://masto.adamchandler.me/@AdamChandler will be going offline in a few weeks. I’ll be giving Pixelfed a try as well http://pixelfed.social/adamchandler but I can’t say if it’ll stick or not and Micro.blog can do both Images & text which is nice.
For now, you can find a link to my Micro.blog at the top of my website and it does have RSS and is federated so you can follow it from anywhere federation allows such as Mastodon by following @Adam@micro.adamchandler.me.
Honestly, people who were following me won’t notice much different. I’ll be saving some money ($100 a year roughly + saving on $25 a year I was paying for Ivory app for Mastodon). I’m looking forward to all of the other Micro.blog features that Mastodon doesn’t have. Also, the image / gallery view looks pretty amazing – https://micro.adamchandler.me/photos/